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Facebook Oversight Board says other social networks ‘welcome to join’ if project succeeds
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Facebook Oversight Board has only been operational for a short time, but the nascent project is already looking ahead. In a conversation hosted by...
Top 100 subscription apps grew 34% to $13B in 2020, share of total spend remained the same
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Apps saw record downloads and consumer spending in 2020, globally reaching somewhere around $111 billion to $112 billion, according to various estimat...
Researchers look to ‘worm blobs’ to improve robotic movement
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What, you are no doubt asking, is a worm a blob? Well, it’s a blob of worms, obviously. More specifically, it’s a blob of California blackworms. I...
SmartHop raises a $12M Series A to ease trucking logistics
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you are a founder and launched a startup last February of 2020 just before the pandemic hit, then you may have felt like you were living the ultima...
Hyundai shrinks its ‘walking car’ robot to carry cargo, get rides from drones
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hyundai Motor Group is back with a new “walking car” robot that can use its wheels to roll along a path or stand up and navigate tougher terrain o...
SplashLearn raises $18 million for its game-based edtech platform
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
SplashLearn, a 10-year-old U.S.-headquartered edtech startup that teaches children through a game-based curriculum, has raised $18 million in a new fi...
LanzaJet inks deal with British Airways for 7500 tons of fuel low emission fuel additive per year
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
LanzaJet, the renewable jet fuel startup spun out from the longtime renewable and synthetic fuel manufacturer, LanzaTech, has inked a supply agreement...
Hasselblad X1D II 50C: out of the studio and into the streets
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We crawled into an abandoned school bus, trespassed through dilapidated hallways, dodged fleeting thunderstorms and wandered through empty streets of ...
Clubhouse is now blocked in China after a brief uncensored period
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long...
Okta launches its new open-source design system with a focus on accessibility
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Identity and access management service Okta today launched its new design system, both for its own corporate and brand use, but also as an open-source...
Firefly will light up the Moon with $93M lunar lander contract from NASA
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace with a $93.3 million contract to take a lunar lander module loaded with experiments to the surface of the Moon. Whi...
The cloud infrastructure market hit $129B in 2020
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The cloud infrastructure market in 2020 reflected society itself, with the richest companies getting richer and the ones at the bottom of the market g...
Apple Music, Books, iTunes, App Store and more are experiencing outages
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Several high-level Apple services are experiencing issues and outages on Wednesday morning, Apple has confirmed. These issues are impacting a number o...
CA Supreme Court denies lawsuit challenging Prop 22’s constitutionality
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The California Supreme Court today shot down the lawsuit filed by a group of rideshare drivers in California and the Service Employees International U...
What Andy Jassy’s promotion to Amazon CEO could mean for AWS
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Blockbuster news struck late this afternoon when Amazon announced that Jeff Bezos would be stepping back as CEO of Amazon, the company he built from a...
Mask-wearers will be able to unlock their iPhone with the Apple Watch
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In addition to AirPlay support for Fitness+, today’s iOS 14.5 developer beta is bringing some key new features to mobile operating system. At the to...
Rocket startup Astra is going public vis SPAC
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rocket launch company Astra, which just reached space this past December with a test launch from Alaska, will be going public on the NASDAQ via a merg...
Apple Fitness+ is adding AirPlay casting
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A week after introducing Time to Walk, Apple has released another software update aimed at expanding its Fitness+ footprint. With today’s arrival th...
bluShift Aerospace launches its first rocket powered by biofuels
01 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
New space startup bluShift wants to bring a new kind of propellant to the small satellite launching market, with rockets powered by bio-derived rocket...
Charlie launches a mobile app that ‘gamifies’ getting out of debt
01 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Charlie, a personal finance app that began as a chatbot, is relaunching today with a revamped experience focused on the larger goal of helping everyda...
Pivoting to home fitness, Aviron offers gamified rowing machines
29 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few tech sectors had more to gain from the events of 2020 than home fitness. Interest in the category was swift, as gyms were declared one of the bigg...
Google open sources Tilt Brush VR software as it shuts down internal development
29 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As Facebook and Apple begin to fire up more projects in the AR/VR world, Google has spent the last year shutting down most of their existing projects ...
Sony’s tempts professionals with the top-shelf, top-tier Alpha 1
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sony is making a play for the top end of the professional digital camera world, where videographers and sports photographers demand immaculate image q...
Ring’s new video doorbell is $60
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The top-line feature for Ring’s latest is no doubt its price. No way around that. At $60, it’s $40 cheaper than the standard Video Doorbell – an...
GitLab reshuffles its paid subscription plans, drops its Bronze/Starter tier
27 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
GitLab, the increasingly popular DevOps platform, today announced a major update to its subscription model. The company is doing away with its $4/mont...
Tweetbot 6 released with new subscription pricing
27 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tapbots, the company behind Tweetbot, has released a major update for the iPhone and iPad. Tweetbot 6 is now available in the App store. While there a...
Twitter acquires newsletter platform Revue
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Twitter is getting into the newsletter business. The social media company is announcing that it has acquired Revue, a Dutch startup that allows users ...
Calling Swedish VCs: Be featured in The Great TechCrunch Survey of European VC
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Stockholm, and Sw...
Google refreshes its mobile search experience
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Google today announced a subtle but welcome refresh of its mobile search experience. The idea here is to provide easier to read search results and a m...
Xbox Live Gold is getting a big price hike
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In what feels like an attempt at kicking some bad news under the rug on a Friday, Microsoft announced this morning that the price of Xbox Live Gold is...
YouTube launches hashtag landing pages to all users
22 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
YouTube is embracing the hashtag. The company has been quietly working on a new feature that allows users to better discover content using hashtags —...
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Camera refinements are nice, but the price drop’s the thing
22 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Galaxy S21 is a tank. It’s a big, heavy (8.04 ounces versus its predecessor’s 7.7), blunt instrument of a phone. It’s quintessential Samsung...
Raspberry Pi Foundation launches $4 microcontroller with custom chip
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Meet the Raspberry Pi Pico, a tiny little microcontroller that lets you build hardware projects with some code running on the microcontroller. Even mo...
Facebook and Instagram’s AI-generated image captions now offer far more details
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Every picture posted to Facebook and Instagram gets a caption generated by an image analysis AI, and that AI just got a lot smarter. The improved syst...
Landbot closes $8M Series A for its ‘no code’ chatbot builder
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Barcelona-based Landbot, a ‘no-code’ chatbot builder, has bagged a $8M Series A led by the Spanish-Israeli VC firm Swanlaab, alongside support fro...
Netflix’s ‘Shuffle Play’ feature will roll out to all users worldwide this year
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Netflix is always in search of a better way to instantly connect users to something to watch, instead of having them waste time unsuccessfully scrolli...
India asks WhatsApp to withdraw new privacy policy, expresses ‘grave concerns’
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
India has asked WhatsApp to withdraw the planned change to its privacy policy, posing a new headache to Facebook-owned service that identifies the Sou...
Calling Bucharest VCs: Be featured in The Great TechCrunch Survey of European VC
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Bucharest and Rom...
Samsung vice chairman Jay Y. Lee sent back to prison in bribery case
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Samsung Electronics vice chairman Jay Y. Lee is back in prison following a retrial of his 2017 conviction in a bribery case that helped lead to the do...
Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Pro are a solid AirPods alternative
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I suspect it will be a while before I get excited over wireless earbuds. It’s not for a lack of trying on the part of manufacturers. In fact, quite ...
Amazon’s newest product lets companies build their own Alexa assistant
15 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Amazon is selling access to the underlying technology stack of Alexa to let companies — starting with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles — build their own ...
Samsung answers Apple with the $199 Galaxy Buds Pro
15 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Even before the leaks, we all saw the Galaxy Buds Pro coming. It was a given that the company was planning to deliver its own take on Apple’s AirPod...
At least one of Samsung’s new robots is definitely coming out (hint: it’s the vacuum)
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the last couple of years, Samsung’s CES press conferences have featured a parade of futuristic home robots. They’re are smart, dexterous and i...
Checkout.com raises $450 million and reaches $15 billion valuation
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Payments company Checkout.com is raising once again. The company has closed a $450 million Series C round with Tiger Global Management leading the rou...
Rollables are the new foldables
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Smartphone sales are bad — and have been for a couple of years now. Certainly this ongoing pandemic hasn’t helped. All the talk about how 5G and n...
Following riots, alternative social apps and private messengers top the app stores
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alternative social media apps including MeWe, CloutHub and other privacy-focused rivals to big tech, are topping the app stores following Trump’s ba...
Microsoft’s latest business-focused Surface is focused on remote work
12 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As CES starts in earnest today, I anticipate we’ll be seeing a lot of hardware focused on remote work. PC sales saw a nice spike last year, even as ...
Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now are coming to LG TVs
12 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
LG spent a good chunk of its CES press conference talking about its lineup of TVs for 2021. You can expect bigger, slimmer and brighter TVs. I’m not...
Stripe reportedly joins the tech platforms booting President Trump from their services
11 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It might be easier at this point to ask which tech platforms President Donald Trump can still use. Payment-processing company Stripe is the latest tec...
Samsung simplifies with a lower-price premium Chromebook
11 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Happy almost CES! Sure the year’s biggest consumer electronics show hasn’t officially kicked off, but, well, what do such arbitrary signposts real...
Tesla has decided to sell the cheaper Model Y standard range after all
08 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tesla has started taking orders for a cheaper standard range version of the Model Y in an apparent reversal by CEO Elon Musk who earlier this year see...
Lenovo’s new all-in-one has a swiveling screen, because sure, why not?
08 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Leave it to Lenovo to give the world a swiveling all-in-one. It’s kind of the company’s M.O. – not always the most necessary or practical, but n...
Tech leaders speak out about platforms’ roles in US Capitol riots
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After pro-Trump extremists violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, a number of tech executives and industry leaders are calling on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey...
TikTok rolls out its first LiDAR-powered AR effect
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Snapchat was among the first apps to leverage the iPhone 12 Pro’s LiDAR Scanner for AR, but now TikTok has followed suit. The social video app confi...
Any San Francisco teacher who needs a second monitor can get one, via Two Screens for Teachers
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Any teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District who needs a second monitor can request one free of charge from Two Screens for Teachers, the ...
C by GE gets rebranded under new ownership, expands beyond lighting
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a decent chance you missed the news back in May — there was, after all, a lot going on at the time. General Electric sold off its more tha...
Looking to decarbonize the metal industry, Bill Gates-backed Boston Metal raises $50 million
05 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Steel production accounts for roughly 8 percent of the emissions that contribute to global climate change. It is one of the industries that sits at th...
Google and Snap in talks to invest in India’s ShareChat
05 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
ShareChat, which added Twitter as an investor in 2019, is in talks to add two more American giants to its captable. The Indian social network is in ad...
Astronaut Anne McClain on designing and piloting the next generation of spacecraft
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
NASA recently announced the astronauts who will be taking part in the Artemis missions, and among them is Anne McClain, who has spent 203 days in orbi...
NYC MTA’s contactless fare system completes rollout, will phase out MetroCard in 2023
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the last day of 2020, New York City’s Metro Transit Authority announced that it has finished its roll out of contactless payment systems. With th...
Bose’s latest sleep-centric earbuds mostly do the trick
01 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been a strange year for sleep. For me, levels have fluctuated between too little and too much, but have – more often than not – tended towa...
An earnest review of a robotic cat pillow
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You don’t need Qoobo in your life. Nobody needs Qoobo, exactly. In fact, first reactions tend to range from befuddlement to bemusement. The robotic ...
Imagine being blind and trying to attend a virtual event. Try that next time you stage one.
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How do you make a virtual event accessible for people who are blind or visually impaired? When I started work on Sight Tech Global back in June this y...
RentPath drops acquisition deal with CoStar after FTC antitrust lawsuit
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
RentPath, owner of property listing sites including Rent.com and Apartment Guide, said today it has cancelled its agreement to be acquired by CoStar G...
Seattle-based Madrona raises $320M for its eighth fund
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Madrona Venture Group has been a mainstay of the Seattle and northwest United States startup ecosystem for years now, and it looks like it is going to...
Tesla to make India debut ‘early’ next year
29 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tesla will begin its operations in India “early” 2021, a top Indian minister said on Monday, a day after the tech carmaker said it was confident i...
Samsung hasn’t announced the Galaxy S21 yet, but you can already reserve one
29 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For obvious reasons, many of us are spending the final week of 2020 looking forward. Samsung is hoping some folks are looking far enough ahead to rese...
Gillmor Gang: Get Back
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we sat on the deck with our daughter Ella and her boyfriend Nick. Knowing of my fascination with all things Beatles, Nick gave me a Japanese 45 ...
Music made 2020 better, but we failed to make 2020 better for musicians
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Are you okay?” I don’t have a good answer to the question. Knowing full well that I’m talking back to an algorithm — even one asking the sa...
Elon Musk claims he tried selling Tesla to Apple but Tim Cook wasn’t interested
24 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tesla stock’s miraculously bizarre 2020 might have a gone different way had Apple’s Tim Cook agreed to a meeting in recent years, or so says Elon ...
Honk introduces a real-time, ephemeral messaging app aimed at Gen Z
24 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A new mobile app called Honk aims to make messaging with friends a more interactive, real-time experience. Instead of sending texts off into the void ...
TikTok launches its first personalized annual recap feature, ‘Year on TikTok’
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Spotify users have Wrapped and Instagram users have their Top 9. And now TikTok users will have their own year-in-review feature, too. The company tod...
Google expands its cloud with new regions in Chile, Germany and Saudi Arabia
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been a busy year of expansion for the large cloud providers, with AWS, Azure and Google aggressively expanding their data center presence aroun...
Gillmor Gang: Full Stream Ahead
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Twitter is shutting down Periscope, the video app it acquired several years ago when Facebook Live threatened to lap the field. When we stream the Gil...
Unicorn travel startup Hopper is facing a pandemic-fueled customer service nightmare
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mobile travel app Hopper has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers canceled their trips and airlines dropped their flights. But the comp...
Space Force commander explains how the new military service operates like a startup
21 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The latest branch of the US Military was founded just a year ago and will celebrate its first birthday on December 20. General John W. “Jay” Raymo...
Google Stadia is now available on iOS
21 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A few weeks after announcing that iOS support was on the way, Google’s cloud gaming service now supports the iPhone and iPad. As expected, the compa...
Googling for “Baby Yoda” will beam him into your living room via augmented reality
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Google has been all about the fun little augmented reality Easter Eggs lately, with a bevy of search terms triggering Halloween-themed AR experiences ...
Coinbase files to go public confidentially and we’re hyped
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Coinbase, perhaps the best-known American crypto company, announced today that it has filed confidentially to go public. The company’s debut was exp...
Austin’s edtech startup Aceable adds another $50 million for accelerated expansion
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Aceable, the Austin-based mobile edtech service for state-accredited classes, is getting an “A” from investors again as private equity firm HGGC p...
Bitcoin passes $20k and reaches all-time high
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After reaching a previous all-time high on November 30th, 2020 and December 1st, 2020, bitcoin is now trading well above $20,000 and has surpassed its...
Bandcamp Fridays will continue through next May
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The past eight or so months have been profoundly difficult for musicians. With touring ground to a halt and streaming services offering fractions of c...
Among Us launches on the Nintendo Switch
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Surprise! Among Us is now available on the Nintendo Switch for $5.00. The Switch version features cross-platform play allowing PC, mobile, and Switch ...
Amazon Fashion launches a custom clothing service, Made for You
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Amazon today is launching a way for customers to create custom clothing with a new service called Made for You, which lets shoppers create a custom T-...
Atlanta-based gaming controller peripheral seller KontrolFreek has been bought by SteelSeries
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After nearly a decade selling gaming and console peripherals to gamers looking to spice up their systems, Atlanta-based KontrolFreek has been acquired...
Amazon’s body-scanning Halo fitness band is now available to everyone in the US
14 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Given all of the…feedback Amazon has received, it’s hard to believe the Halo wasn’t widely available until today. Announced in late-August, the ...
Google will let you turn off YouTube ads for alcohol and gambling
14 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve ever had a Father’s Day ad offering great deals for your dead dad sail into your inbox, you know that online advertising can be disturbi...
Hyundai buys controlling interest in Boston Dynamics
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s official. Boston Dynamics is becoming part of the Hyundai family (pending regulatory approval, naturally). The Waltham, Massachusetts-based rob...
This is not a review of Apple’s new AirPod Max headphones
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve had Apple’s AirPod Max headphones for less than 24 hours, so there is no way I would attempt to write a review of any sort. But I do have som...
App stores to see 130 billion downloads in 2020 and record consumer spend of $112 billion
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Consumers will have downloaded 130 billion apps in 2020 across iOS and Google Play, up 10% year-over-year, according to mobile data and analytics firm...
DoorDash, C3.ai skyrocket in public market debuts
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Haters gonna hate, IPOs gonna pop. That’s the story today as richly valued DoorDash and C3.ai, two American technology unicorns, saw their values sk...
Twitter users complain of timelines being overrun with ‘Promoted Tweets’
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Twitter’s timeline is currently overrun with ads for some users, in what appears to be a glitch involving the distribution of Promoted Tweets. Typic...
Apple announces $549 over-ear headphones, the AirPods Max
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The AirPods Max are joining the AirPods and AirPods Pro in Apple’s audio accessory lineup. As you can see on the photo, Apple is releasing its first...
Luko raises $60 million for its home insurance products
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
French startup Luko has raised a $60 million Series B funding round (€50 million). The round is led by EQT Ventures, with existing investors Accel, ...
Gillmor Gang: HBO Plus
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With one fell swoop, WarnerMedia eradicated the status quo in Hollywood, turning its 2021 feature film schedule on its head. Well, not quite. By movin...
Apple reportedly testing Intel-beating high core count Apple Silicon chips for high-end Macs
07 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Apple is reportedly developing a number of Apple Silicon chip variants with significantly higher core counts relative to the M1 chips that it uses in ...
Google shutting down Poly 3D content platform
07 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Google is almost running out of AR/VR projects to kill off. The company announced today in an email to Poly users that they will be shutting 3D-object...
WH’s AI EO is BS
04 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
An Executive Order was just issued from the White House regarding “the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Government.” Leaving aside th...
Twitter finally shuts down its abandoned prototype app twttr
04 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Twitter is shutting down its experimental app twttr, which the company had used publicly prototype new features back in 2019. The app was first introd...
Salesforce beats growth expectations, as investors digest the Slack acquisition
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today after the bell, Salesforce reported its third-quarter earnings for its fiscal 2021, a period that ended October 31, 2020. The CRM giant reported...